Republic of Indios

chapter 5 Republic of Indios

For the truculent old conquistador Jerónimo López, Spanish authority in Mesoamerica seemed to hang ‘by a thread of wool’ in the summer of 1541.1 On the 4th of July rebellious Caxcan communities that lived along New Spain’s north-western frontier defeated a relatively large Spanish force led by Pedro de Alvarado, then the most experienced and celebrated Spanish commander in Mesoamerica, who died in the subsequent retreat. Following this unexpected victory, the uprising gained large numbers of new adherents from neighbour- ing communities and acquired a millenarian tone with avowedly anti-Spanish and anti-Christian aims. As the invigorated insurgents advanced towards the Spanish outpost of Guadalajara they dispatched emissaries to instigate cor- responding rebellions in the heart of New Spain.2 Despite the bluster about Spanish feats of arms during the Conquest, it was clear to most Spaniards in Mexico City that they would not survive if the great indigenous polities of central Mesoamerica took up arms against them. Contrary to López’s fears, however, the Caxcan uprising of 1541, known to posterity as the ‘Mixtón War,’ never spread south of Xuchipila – the semi- nomadic rebels’ craggy stronghold – into the settled polities at the core of New Spain. Instead, when the viceroy, Antonio de Mendoza, announced his inten- tion to lead an expedition to subdue the uprising, the response of most indigenous authorities resembled that of don Francisco de Sandoval Acazitli, prince of Tlalmanalco and hegemon of the polities of Chalco – the granary of Mexico City:

1 ene, Vol. iv, Doc. 236 2 Actas del Cabildo de la Ciudad de Mexico, Vol. iv, ‘De 1o. de Enero de 1536 a 30 de Agosto de 1543’, Orozco y Berra eds., (1859), entry for 5th July 1541; Jerónimo López, letter of the 20th October 1541 who claimed the nahuales or holy men of the Caxcans had been identified in Tlaxcala, quoted in José López-Portillo y Weber, La rebelión de la Nueva Galicia (Saltillo, Coahuila: Escuela Normal Superio, 1981), 454; vea, Mendoza, Cargo xxxv, Item, 132f; ene, Vol. iv, Doc. 236. For modern commentators who have emphasised this link see Miguel León- Portilla, La Flecha en el Blanco: Francisco Tenamaztle y Bartolomé de las Casas en la lucha por los derechos de los indígenas 1541–1556 (México: Editorial Diana, 1995), 5–12; and José Martínez Millán coord., Carlos v y la quiebra del humanismo político en Europa (1530–1558) (Madrid: Sociedad Estatal para la Conmemoración de los Centenarios de Felipe ii y Carlos v, 2001) Vol. 4, 15f.

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I, Don Francisco de Sandoval, cacique and lord of this city of San Luis Tlalmanalco, having received the news that the lord viceroy don Antonio de Mendoza who resides in the great city of México and royal audiencia, needed to go to war in the land of the Chichimecas of Xuchipila, went to the said city and begged the lord viceroy to grant me the honour (mer- ced) of going with those of my province of Chalco to serve in this war, and His Lordship thought it good that we should go to this war. When I returned to Tlalmanalco I readied all the people from this province of Chalco for the said war … and all of them of their own good will accepted to go and serve in the said war.3

The ‘Mixtón War’ proved to be New Spain’s largest rebellion in the sixteenth century, and is sometimes cited as evidence of generalised indigenous resistance to Spanish domination.4 But the response of indigenous lords like Acazitli suggests a different conclusion. Without the sort of coercion that characterised Nuño de Guzman’s much smaller muster for the ‘conquest of New Galicia’ in 1531, tens of thousands of indigenous warriors flocked to the viceroy’s banner in the summer of 1541 (along with an almost full levy of around 1,000 Spaniards, which did not include an indisposed López) (see Fig. 10).5 Remarkably, this army – possibly the largest raised on Mesoamerican soil in the nearly three hundred years between the fall of Tenochtitlan and Miguel Hidalgo’s sack of Guanajuato in the autumn of 1810 – assembled within a month of Mendoza’s call to arms and it remained on duty for around six months (differ ent

3 Gabriel de Castañeda, ‘Relación de la jornada que hizo don Francisco de Sandoval Acazitli, cacique y señor natural que fue del pueblo de Tlalmanalco, provincia de Chalco, con el se- ñor visorey don Antonio de Mendoza cuando fue a la conquista y pacificación de los indios chichimecas de Xuchipila,’ Pedro Vázquez trans., in Joaquín García de Icazbalceta, Colección de documentos para la historia de México, Vol. 2 (Mexico: J.M. Andrade, 1858–1866; 1980), 307ff, (henceforth: ‘Relación Acazitli’). Chichimeca literally meant ‘son of dog’ in Nahuatl. The settled polities of central Mesoamerica used it like the term ‘Barbarian’ to describe the semi-nomadic tribes of the north. Xuchipila was another name for the region surrounding the Mixtón hill. 4 E.g. Martínez Millán, Carlos v y la quiebra del humanismo, Vol. 4, ‘Nueva Roma: del señorío indígena novohispano y su asimilación política.’ León-Portilla, La Flecha en el Blanco, 4; Su- san Schroeder ed., Native resistance and the Pax Colonial in New Spain (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998), 32–38. 5 Numbers vary from 20,000–60,000. See Ida Altman, The War for Mexico’s West: Indians and Spaniards in New Galicia, 1524–1550 (Albuquerque, University of New Mexico Press, 2010), 165–70; Laura E. Matthew and Michael R. Oudijk eds., Indian conquistadors: Indigenous allies in the conquest of Mesoamerica (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2007), 159f; López- Portillo y Weber, La rebelión, 450, 459 and 465.

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